Wandering the Nations Capitol--Yet Again

Franklin D. Roosevelt: Could he be Barack's Template?

Last week I was free to wander the nation's capitol. All alone, I set forth from my hotel near Dupont Circle, catch the metro, and in a heartbeat, I'm dumped off in the land of tourists, museums, marble Federal buildings, and, presumably, the inner workings of our government.

While I was witness to precious little government doings (as noted in a previous blog, the public is barricaded out of the serious business), the weather was cool, crisp, and clear and I had a pretty good day walking around the great monuments to the men and women who founded/defended/died for our country. I found the names of some friends of mine who died in Viet Nam and it caused me to wonder, all over again, about all that. To be truthful, it wasn't the names of the dead stretching out on that black marble wall that got to me--it was the phone book-thick directory of their names that made those painful old echoes in my mind return. It was as heavy as a local telephone book--58,000 names--on and on, and , as I leafed through the plastic-covered pages looking for just three names, it struck me that, in that too-heavy book, I was holding the names of dead men that should have been living like I have been living--raising children, having grandchildren, traveling, eating, drinking, making love.....

But what's 58,000 dead when you when you can see 6,000,0000 dead? Before I reached the Viet Nam War memorial, I walked through the Holocaust Museum. That gets the human-beings-are-really-savage-beasts juices flowing--and then, with visions of unspeakable horror floating in my brain, I passed through the FDR memorial that was all about war and how bad it is and how it really never should happen again. Then, there I was, in the midst of my generation's war and all its dead and then on the way back to the hotel the news stands were full of papers with headlines about this generation's war. The Mall at our nation's capitol is dignified and haunted and very sad; it's all a very fine and ongoing madness and very old news, and I'm sure, hardly worth mentioning.

What is worth mentioning, at least in passing, is his observation: while I was studying the barbaric madness in the Holocaust Museum, I was mingling with hundreds of middle schoolers on class field trips. When a group of us looked down into a pit filled with photographs of naked women's bodies that had been cut up and pickled by the Nazi doctors for "research purposes," I heard nary an adolescent snicker.

I had a great deal of trouble sleeping that night. The next day, I avoided dead old friends and monsters wearing swastikas and spent the day hanging tough in the National Gallery of Art, the intent being to balance the human genius for murder with the one it has for creating things profoundly beautiful. Watch this space.

The Final Days: The Right Digs Down Deep

I'm in D.C. keeping my wife company while she attends to business. Great fun having the time to wander freely about this great city taking in the sights. I've become pretty good at handling what Europeans call "the underground," whizzing under the city on the subway to get from one place to another.

Going underground is an apt metaphor for this, the final two weeks in the presidential campaign. With all the polls showing a pretty decent margin for an Obama win, the Right is digging down deeper and deeper into the mud trying to come up with something that will scare the bejesus out of the undecided voters. In the past week, they dug up the scary old term "socialist." I'm old enough to remember what they want us to remember--some vision of the Soviet Gulag and goose-stepping Russian soldiers marching through Red Square, or some welfare state where the government controls our lives and where all the lazy bums have cradle-to-grave security.

On the contrary, having lived in Europe for fourteen years, when I think of socialism as a real, working form of government, I see not the disaster and horrors of the Soviet system, but rather the stable, happy Scandinavian countries.

But forget the Swedes. For various reasons the Scandinavian system wouldn't work in the United States, and, in any event, I'm no Socialist. No, better here the rough and tumble, hurly-burly of capitalism with its, as my grandfather used to say, cycles of "boom and bust." The capitalist roller coaster is a better fit with the American personality. We are capitalism and capitalism is us. We just got busted, though, and, if we're going to continue to embrace the heady joy ride that is true capitalism, we're going to have to be willing to ride it out. So, my advice to the Right is to come up from underground, clean the mud from your slings, and get back on the roller coaster. Obama is no socialist, he just wants to install some safety features on the great ride that is America.

In Praise of English Majors and Sailboats

See this beautiful lady? Her name is Seawind and last weekend she became ours. The invention of the sailboat was, without a doubt, one of mankind's most profound insights into tool making. The simple idea of putting sails in the wind did nothing less than allow mankind to populate the world. But never mind that--just look at her. Few things are more beautiful (she's an Alberg 30 for those interested) and we'll be sailing her on the Chesapeake as soon as we can sail her down from her present home in Cutchogue, L.I.

Next, the election. Less than three weeks left to go and Obama is pulling ahead in all the polls. This is causing much teeth gnashing and hopeless squeaking by the conservative pundits/press. Despite all their efforts to sink the Democratic boat with gales of negative rhetoric, the lovely vessel of liberalism floats proud.

It is wonderful to note that the Liberal media get much of the blame. Imagine, a bunch of English majors tilting the most important election in the Free World. And everyone decries our lack of leadership in science and math. I say, if we are to defend our basic human freedoms, we need a whole lot more people with good backgrounds in Shakespeare.

By the way, I was very pleased to see that Chris Buckley, the son of William F. Buckley, the founder of the National Review, was fired from his job as one of their writers after he came out in support of Obama (see: Dailybeast.com). Apparently he pointed out that conservatives/Republicans have done a fine job of trashing our country at home and abroad. Now why can't more (very) intelligent people on the Right see the light? I suspect Christopher Buckley was an English major. I know his father was a sailor. He would have appreciated Seawind.